


Pragmatism

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, The Eyepocalypse, episode 179 spoilers, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26636968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: Martin notices that the only people left who can hurt Jon are the people who loved him. And Martin is very much in love.But he's also a ruthless pragmatist.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 46
Kudos: 167





	Pragmatism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [traveller19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/traveller19/gifts).



> For traveller19, who I accidentally got hooked on tMA. She knows full well that I am mostly a horror author who is in it for the monsters and almost never writes fluff, but she asked for fic. So here you go, buddy. Please keep in mind that you knew I was a monster coming into this.

Daisy can hurt Jon.

The fact lodges in Martin’s head and the implications slide neatly into place almost the next instant. Daisy can hurt Jon because at some point _before,_ no matter how carefully the both of them would talk around it, Daisy loved him and Jon had loved her back. It might not have been romantic and it might not have been for very long, but it was _true_.

And, well, Martin doesn’t understand a lot of what’s happening during the apocalypse, but Martin is absolutely sure of two facts.

One: Martin is very much in love with Jonathan Sims.

Two: Martin is and always has been a ruthless pragmatist.

* * *

He’s not actually sure when he falls in love with Jonathan Sims. If he had to guess, he’d probably say it when realized that all of Jon’s performative bluster, was just that: _bluster_. Jon is a complainer, prone to over-dramatic sighs and rambling barrages of insults, but Martin’s heard him just as derisively biting about a particularly bad choice in ice cream toppings as he has about a strung out liar giving a blatently false statement.

The bluster is _amusing_ for Jon and while Martin is not overly fond of it being directed at him, he understands. God knows Martin takes all the chances he can get for amusement in the Archives. He does think his own coping mechanism of recording poetry on company property is a wee bit healthier than Jon’s, but…

When it’s not directed at him, Jon’s _funny_. Martin takes to bring Jon tea right before the recordings, watching him skim through the research and listening for the razor sharp commentary he mumbles under his breath. Martin’s always smiling when he leaves.

It’s Tim who notices the infatuation, because Tim himself is a relentless flirt and consummate busybody. “This is going to be a problem isn’t it?” Tim asks as Martin sighs after Jon one afternoon.

Martin sputters.

“Oh you know these things,” Sasha answers for him. “They’re never problems until they’re capital P _Problems._ ”

Martin has to bite his tongue before he retorts, because if he lets this slip, it’ll be worse than the time his mother found his notebook full of poems.

Because Martin’s immediate, instinctual response is, _love is never a problem._

* * *

He should be dead.

Martin is well aware of that fact. The apocalypse split open the world and locked everyone in their nightmares save the people who’d served the dread powers. Martin does not belong to the Eye. The Lonely might have had a hold on him for a time, but Jon managed to deaden that particular connection. One of the others should have grabbed him then. Martin’s more than a little claustrophobic and when he thinks of the corruption and Jane Prentiss’s _worms_ he can’t help but sink back into the months-long panic of sleeping in the Archives with a corkscrew for protection. By the time they leave the cabin, all of the other people in the village have been relocated to their specific domains.

But Martin’s still here. Not snapped up by fear gods and not stranded in one of the myriad of hellish domains. Even the avatars seem content to let him stay by Jon’s side.

And why him? Out of everyone else, why is Martin Blackwood the one walking around? Oh, he tries to keep up the front, tries to tell Jon that it’ll be the two of them stopping the apocalypse, but his own words to Peter Lucas haunt him even more than the endless terrors in front of him.

Martin’s not a hero. He’s got Jon for that. But he doesn’t want Jon to be a hero either because this doesn’t feel like the sort of story where the hero gets a happy ending.

Still, there’s a reason why he’s here. A reason why it’s him and not say, Georgie. Or even someone like Basira or Melanie. He’s pretty sure they’d loved Jon, too in their own prickly ways and all of them seem a damn sight more together than Martin.

But they’re scattered throughout the hellscape, Jon’s trying to respect their privacy and Martin’s _still here_. It’s either the safest place left in the world or the most dangerous.

* * *

“You’ve been quiet, Martin.”

Martin huffs. They’ve been walking. One of the strange in-between places where the screams fade into static. He’d be worried if he hadn’t been lost in the Lonely before. The entire point was there was that no one could hear you.

Martin hesitates as he considers the multitudes of truth he could tell. That he misses Tim and Sasha more than he misses his mother. That he’s been vaguely ill since he watched Basira kill Daisy. Not so much because of the brutality of it—he’s seen enough in the past few months that the brutality barely registers—but more because it was an act of compassion. He’s never considered something like that. That love and murder can coexist side-by-side.

He wonders why Basira didn’t join her instead. Martin thinks that’s what he might have done.

He thinks that might be what he’s _already_ done.

“I don’t like it here,” he says.

It’s a truth, of course. There’s no point to lies. Not even white lies. Jon can tell the difference if he’s paying even an iota of attention. But Jon’s promised not to compel anything out of him and the promise seems genuine. He doesn’t really use questions when he speaks anymore.

“I don’t much like it either, but I suspect you’ll like the next place even less.”

Jon’s not looking into Martin’s head for answers. Because if he was, he would surely comment on the half-formed ideas simmering in Martin’s brain.

Sometimes Martin wishes he was looking.

* * *

Martin gets the feeling that Helen likes him. Annabelle Cane seems to regard him as a particularly useful insect. He’s not fond of either. He’s also not fond of the doors or ringing phones that seem to materialize whenever Jon leaves to do a statement.

Martin’s recorded enough statements of his own to know that going through the spooky door, or talking to mysterious voices isn’t the route to a happy ending.

He also knows that these things will only become more persistent if ignored.

So he caves and opens a door.

It’s not a portal to an endless abyss, just a door to a rather unobtrusive passageway. It looks almost like the ones under the Institute, though Martin isn’t fool enough to think that it’s a short-cut to Magnus.

He’s almost disappointed. No new horrors. Just an empty corridor.

But then a flash of silver catches his eye and he looks to ground level.

Lying on the stone floor within reaching distances of the threshold is a small silver knife.

A dagger, even. If Martin wants to be poetic about it.

Martin’s hand curls against the doorframe, and he stares for a long time.

Then he picks the dagger up, tucks it into his knapsack and closes the door firmly behind him.

* * *

They don’t really sleep anymore.

Either of them. He’s not sure sleeps a thing that still happens in the apocalypse. And without the outlet of dreams, it’s hard to think of what the world used to be. Hard to picture the streets of London or the smell of the tube. Hard to remember paying bills, or going out to lunch.

“We’ll get it back,” Jon promises. “We get to Jonah and we get the world put back how it was.”

“Great,” Martin says. “Right. How, exactly, do we do this? I’m pretty sure Jonah isn’t going to set the world back because we ask nicely, so we’re probably going to be a bit more on the murdery side of the spectrum.”

“Yes, Martin,” Jon drawls. “This is one monster who I think more than deserves it.”

And well, Martin’s trying not to lean too hard into team murder ever since the incident with the prepubescent avatar. He wants Magnus dead, of course. He’s actually wanted quite a lot of people dead in the past few months, but he’s not sure exactly what that’s going to _fix._ “Yes, of course. But will that _work?_ Kill Magnus, bam, no more apocalypse.”

“I don’t know,” Jon says.

“You can literally know anything about everything that has ever existed.”

“I have suspicions,” Jon allows, “but the future isn’t in the scope of my knowledge and Magnus sits in the seat of the Eye’s power.”

“I know all that. But…” Martin tries to keep the pleading out of his voice. “will it work?”

* * *

When they find Georgie and Melanie, Georgie almost manages to blind Jon. She’s quick and surgical, moving with a kind of speed and clarity that Martin admires. She hasn’t managed a knife, but a pair of pencils, one in each hand to puncture either of Jon’s eyes as she slips out of a tight embrace.

Jon screams and the world shudders.

Georgie crouches down next to him, a hand wrapped around her shoulder. “I had to try. Jon, it worked for Melanie, you know I had to try.”

“Georgie.” Melanie’s own scarred, unseeing eyes sit dead on her face. Her voice is shaking. “Georgie, this doesn’t feel like _better._ ”

The ground lurches beneath them.

Blood drips down Jon’s cheeks from the ruined mess of his eyes.

A door appears behind them. Without thinking Martin throws it open and grabs Georgie and Melanie and shoves them through. He’s not sure where it goes, but he knows down to the fiber of his being that they cannot stay here and hope to survive it.

Winking out over Jon’s visible skin are eyes to replace the ones on his face, all of them glowing a dull green.

Martin tries to give Georgie an apologetic smile as he slams the door in their faces.

* * *

“You’re hurt quite a lot for a semi-immortal avatar of a fear god.”

One of the eyes on Jon’s forearm blinks up at him. The blood down his cheeks has slowed to a trickle. When Martin tries to wipe some of it off, it smears.

“I’m getting better,” Jon says, but he’s not. He’s just adapting around the injury this time.

Georgie loved him, once. Might still love him. And Jon might have loved her back.

The eyes—the human ones—aren’t healing.

Martin slings and arm over Jon’s shoulder and holds him close.

They sit side by side as the tremors abate.

* * *

Martin can feel it when they’re close to the end.

Like every eye in the world has turned on the two of them.

They’d had no chance of sneaking in. Impossible to evade the gaze of the Ceaseless Watcher in its seat of power. Jon is tense all through the approach, not a single one of the eyes dotting his skin deigning to blink.

But right before he goes to Jonah, he turns to Martin, the corner of his mouth turned up in a lopsided smile. “You still have that knife, Martin?”

Martin sputters, "It's a dagger." But he doesn't deny it.

Jon _knows_.

Jon had seen this all along.

“I love you,” Jon says and presses a quick dry kiss to his lips. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Then he spins on his heels and Martin hears a thousand tiny clicks as tape recorders whir into motion.

“Statement of the Archivist,” Jon booms as he rounds on Jonah Magnus. “About Martin Blackwood. And all the reasons I'm still Jonathan Sims.”

* * *

Jon wears the Watcher’s Crown. He sits at the heart of the Panopticon, a look of sheer ecstasy on his features.

And Martin? Martin is still here because Jon loves him. And Martin loves him back.

Without Jonah gone, Jon’s the only person left who can occupy this seat of power. With no one left, the system would unravel. The world would go back to what it was.

Martin loves Jon. He loves him as fiercely as he’s loved anything. And that means Martin can hurt Jon. Like Daisy could. Like Georgie could.

Worse, even.

He adjusts his grip on the dagger. He’s wondered since the start of this why Jon kept him safe, why Jon kept him close. Why the other avatars didn’t touch him. There’s only one reason that makes sense. Jon can be hurt by the ones who love him.

And while Martin is very much in love, he’s nothing if not pragmatic.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Pragmatism](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26817958) by [carboncopies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carboncopies/pseuds/carboncopies)




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